Oprah and author Eckhart Tolle, as I wrote yesterday, teach principles that view Jesus as a spiritual supplement. But many Christians live out the principle of Jesus-as-supplement every day.
We may have invited Christ into our lives and now have a relationship with the Father, but our self-efforts wither the vitality of the union. We inwardly believe lies about what Christ did for us. What the crucified and risen Jesus did was incomplete, so we tack on the same nefarious Jesus+X equation:
- Jesus+my efforts to be absolutely perfect=a good relationship with God.
- Jesus+my refusal to wear makeup =a good relationship with God.
- Jesus+my snubbing those who does not know Him= a good relationship with God.
- Jesus+my church attendance=a good relationship with God.
- Jesus+my cuss-free, drug-free, illicit-sex-free efforts= a good relationship with God.
You get the point. (Even people who think they know Christ practice such as equations, but let's concentrate now on those who really do.) Christians are God's own, but this devilish thinking reeks in the eyes of God. We do not take into account God the Father's commitment to make us whole. We ignore the work of the Holy Spirit to create wholeness in us a little bit every day.
Our efforts to reach perfection without relying completely on Jesus remind me of the pigtailed girl, Rhoda Penmark, in the 1956 film,"The Bad Seed." Her outward perfection is jewel-hard, a manifestation of a polluted heart.
("The Bad Seed," courtesy of Shasta018 on YouTube.com.)
Rhoda's corrupted heart led her to kill others. When we believe the crucified and risen Jesus is not enough, that He is only a spiritual supplement, that we do not have to surrender to God's work in us to reach His standard of perfection, we cut off ourselves from heaven's bounty. For as Paul says in Galations, the life we live in the body, we must live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us.
The "perfection" we seek to obtain is merely bewitchment.
More tomorrow.
Film link courtesy of www.imdb.com.
